Share This article

When Tesla announced its plans for a supercharger network, one of the questions raised about the platform was whether we were moving towards a manufacturer-exclusive scenario in which individual companies would have their own fueling stations. This would be profoundly bad for customers — one of the advantages to the modern fuel system is that you don’t have to look for Ford, Chevy, or Toyota-specific gas stations to pump up a vehicle. Now, the company’s CEO Elon Musk has said that Tesla will open up its Supercharging technology to help create a universal standard for all modern cars. You might soon be able to recharge your Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf at a Tesla Supercharger station, in other words.

When asked by a UK journalist for Pocket-lint what kind of sharing arrangement he envisioned, Musk responded that he specifically wants to avoid the walled garden effect with Supercharger technology, and that the main barrier to universal adoption by other EVs is whether or not other vehicles can accept the power level that a Supercharger delivers. Musk also noted that other manufacturers that want to use the Supercharger network would have to adopt the same cost structure. Currently, Supercharger users don’t pay for a fill-up; Musk has stated that each adoptee would need to contribute capital costs “proportional to their fleet’s usage of the network.”

This has been described as patent-sharing at some publications, but Engadget, which broke the initial story, has an update clarifying that while Tesla is willing to share charging and adapter specifications with the industry, it’s not necessarily offering patent licensing. This is one of those fine points of detail that legal firms are typically employed to hash out, particularly as apparently Tesla does have some kind of patent agreement program in the cards — it’s just not ready to talk about it yet.

Why Tesla wants to own the standard

First, let’s acknowledge that the Tesla Model S continues to sit in its own unique space. There’s no other vehicle like it on the market — you can buy plenty of short-range EVs or hybrids for half the cost of a Model S and a few luxury cars for significantly more, but there is no other fully electric car for sale in America with the Model S’s range, price point, and features. That means Tesla is first on the firing line for dealing with an awful lot of problems, but it also means the company is in a position to define the standards and business practices for the emerging EV industry.

The value of this, long-term, can’t be understated. If Elon Musk can push the idea that EV vehicles should be free to charge while establishing Superchargers as the go-to standard for vehicular charging, he could drive home the idea of a vehicle as something you don’t pay to fuel. That kind of mechanic could be a serious threat to the conventional fossil fuel industry. It would challenge the convenience store model (though since convenience stores actually make very little profit on gas, not impossibly so). But more importantly, it puts Elon Musk and Tesla at the forefront of innovation and technology in the EV world. If other companies join the Supercharger network as they bring their own cars to market, they’ll join on Tesla’s terms.

Whether or not that’s problematic will depend entirely on whether or not you’re a company with a alternative charging technology or a different business model at some point in the future. For now, Musk’s move is a smart one — as Tesla inevitably faces more competition and rolls out its own lower-priced cars in the future, it’s looking increasingly as though it’ll be a driving force behind both car sales and fuel technology. Musk isn’t just trying to own the vehicle technology — he’s on a crusade to improve, patent, and ultimately dictate the design of its energy system. As long term plans go, it’s a smart one.

Tagged In

Post a Comment

pelov lov

“Musk isn’t just trying to own the vehicle technology — he’s on a crusade to improve, patent, and ultimately dictate the design of its energy system. As long term plans go, it’s a smart one.”

That’s kinda scary, isn’t it? Although Tesla currently has the #1 drivetrain and corresponding battery production tech (and soon facilities) for electric vehicles, the technology is still in its infancy. There’s undoubtedly going to be some huge strides made in battery tech in the near future in order for EVs to really take off and fully replace gasoline-powered vehicles. In this respect, having a single company point the direction of the entire industry isn’t necessarily a good thing even if it means standardization, cost-cutting, and ease of use. All it takes is a single boffin in a lab somewhere, and the whole industry gets flipped upside down and pointing in the wrong direction.

Bataleon

To be fair, Tesla is the only company 100% committed to electric vehicles. All other motor manufacturers seem to be in La La Land, treating them as a side project.

If Tesla hadn’t made the first more, zero progress would have been made.

pelov lov

If I had to pick a single company to spearhead EV adoption, it would be Tesla. That’s not what I’m arguing, though. What I’m saying is that standardization across many auto makers may cut down on R&D and alternative approaches that could otherwise be vital in pushing more viable battery tech. Although Tesla’s battery and engine/drivetrain tech is better than anyone else on the market (even Mercedes licenses from them), it doesn’t mean it’s good enough to make EVs a viable alternative to traditional gasoline cars. What we need are crazy approaches that come out of seemingly nowhere to get this going, not a standardized approach that, while better than anything else out there, is still fundamentally flawed.

Zunalter

True but since this is still a technology in its infancy, doesn’t it make sense to provide a common foundation from which to innovate?

JoanneSchoturd

before I looked at the check of $8543 , I accept
…that…my neighbour woz like they say truley earning money parttime on their
apple labtop. . there sisters neighbour has done this 4 only 19 months and by
now cleared the debts on their house and bourt a gorgeous Ford . visit this
site C­a­s­h­d­u­t­i­e­s­.­C­O­M­

Zunalter

Oh man, that sounds really great, except that I made $8544 dollars by working parttime as an Extremetech commenter. But thanks for the advice all the same.

Ivor O’Connor

In what way is Tesla’s approach fundamentally flawed?

pelov lov

It’s a stop gap solution that still relies on lithium-ion technology, making it heavy (batteries alone weigh a thousand pounds), expensive, and quite bad on the environment. Furthermore, the batteries deteriorate pretty quickly depending on how much driving you do; more driving = more charge cycles. It also dissipates power when not in use. Range can vary depending on the temperatures (as can battery health), and range is quite meh.

It basically suffers from all the same drawbacks that any Li-ion battery suffers from. That’s why Tesla’s cars, along with most other EVs, are still very much niche products.

Ivor O’Connor

Yes, the batteries weigh a thousand pounds. So do dinosaur engines.

Yes, the batteries deteriorate quickly. They are only warrantied for 8 years. Most experts expect the batteries will last much longer. And then it will cost $8K to replace the battery pack. Sure wish the warranties on anything else were as good.

Does it matter if the batteries go dead in a year if they are not being used?

Yeah, range can vary depending on temperatures. By almost 10%. So you might get 250 miles instead of 275? Either way it is not enough to comfortably go from the Munich Airport to Garmisch and back for a day trip.

Why do you think they went with Li-ion batteries instead of something else?

pelov lov

Because there’s nothing else available, and that’s my point?

Why are we standardizing crappy technology in hopes that it gets us further rather than heavily investing into trying to replace it through a multitude of R&D centers?

Shitty Lithium-ion batteries are what’s holding back the entire tech industry, so I’m not seeing how slapping it into an automobile is going to suddenly cure it’s issues. But maybe you can enlighten us…

Ivor O’Connor

Well we are using, as you say, “shitty Lithium-ion batteries” because they are the best by far of what is available. Nothing else shows any sign of even being remotely competitive. However if something else comes along I’m sure it will be put to use very quickly.

pelov lov

That’s my point, though. Why are we standardizing a dead end? As a short term play, there are some definite bonuses here. Tesla and their partners get to share charging stations, batteries and components, and perhaps decrease the price and increase adoption slightly. Still, these are things that make it suck a little less, but it doesn’t make the battery tech inherently any better.

Ivor O’Connor

Dead end? Not at all. Li-ion batteries are improving by about 8% per year. So in 10 years you’ll be able to travel twice the distance with the same weight battery pack as you do now. In 20 years you’ll be able to travel four times (4x) as far as you do now. In 30 years you’ll be able to drive cross country in a single charge in the current Model S using a new battery pack. And that 8% was before there were plans to make giga factories. So it is not a dead end!

Joel Hruska

Ivor,

Uh. That’s not really accurate. As great as lithium-ion is, we’re not going to just drive it indefinitely. You *can’t.* We know precisely how much energy can be theoretically stored in the chemicals present inside the battery; all of the innovation around batteries involves longer charge cycles, or packing more material into the space, or developing new tech to improve efficiency.

I’m not saying that lithium ion batteries will stop getting better in 2016, or 2020, or when they’re 2x better than they are now, but the scaling factors do *not* permit indefinite doubling-on-doubling of growth.

Ivor O’Connor

Ok, where do you think it will max out at?

Joel Hruska

Ivor,

“They said the same thing about CPU chips.”

And they were right.

Look, every single battery is a complex balance between rechargability, heat, outgassing (highly undesirable), power output, charge time, and cost.

We can build batteries that are far more powerful than lithium-ion right now. Aluminum air or zinc air batteries provide an order of magnitude more energy than a lithium-ion battery. The problem is, these batteries fail on other metrics — they can’t be recharged very often, they’re heat-sensitive, or in some cases, they tend to explode.

The problem with blithely saying : “Oh, we’ll just improve lithium-ion 8% year-on-year” is that it ignores the fact that already, our lithium-ion improvements come at a cost of recharge cycles, new packaging (to squeeze more power into the same space) and in some cases, longevity.)

Lithium-cobalt batteries are already known to hold significantly more power than conventional lithium-ion. Why don’t we use them? Cost and volatility. They’re far more likely to suffer thermal runaway.

Instead of assuming 8% a year like a mantra, look at the dizzying array of battery tech under consideration. You’ll quickly realize that this isn’t a situation where chemists are charging into the great unknown, but rather a field where we are carefully picking our way through enormous boulders trying to find chemistries and configurations that give us the effects we want without the negatives that make technology unusable.

Ivor O’Connor

CPU reduction lasted many decades despite the naysayers. It was always complicated. The 8% mantra for Li-ion is similar to Moore’s Law. Obviously it will end at some point. Pelov Lov seemed to think Li-ion batteries were as good as they were ever going to be and called them a dead end. If they do keep improving by 8% for three decades that will be a 10x improvement. So instead of 275 miles to a charge we could get 2,750 miles to a charge. Still if we only get 1,000 miles to a charge I would not be disappointed. Clearly though Li-ion is the best tech we have and to call it a dead end is similar to calling gas engines a dead end in the 1940s.

Moore’s law dictated that per-$ you’d get 2x the transistors every two years. An 8% bump is absolutely pitiful in that respect.

And Lithium-ion batteries are horrendous for the environment. You can buy a gas-guzzling SVU and drive it for the rest of your life and you won’t create as much pollution as the production/recycling cycle of Lithium-ion produces.

And we primarily use Li-ion batteries because of the safety factor and the production facilities already in place. That’s primarily my issue here: Why are we furthering and standardizing a crappy technology?

“What Musk didn’t mention was any plans — at least at this time — to tinker with the insides of the battery, the chemistry itself. In fact, it’s likely that other than small gains that come from refinements in manufacturing, the batteries in a 2017 Tesla will be functionally akin to those in today’s cars.”

It’s not about developing a new technology that’s superior, but about making money by producing en masse the same old shitty Li-ion batteries.

Ivor O’Connor

“And Lithium-ion batteries are horrendous for the environment. You can buy a gas-guzzling SVU and drive it for the rest of your life and you won’t create as much pollution as the production/recycling cycle of Lithium-ion produces — and that’s just the batteries for a single car!”

Any other wild remarks you would like to make totally removed from all reality? Reminds me how cow and pig farts are suppose to do more damage to the environment than SUVs. Impressive if said at a bar but not so impressive here.

You are quoting Forbes? Seriously? Anyways Musk has said in the past the Giga factories will be able to change the technology in the battery cells quickly when new better technology becomes available. “fairly straight forward for us to change the anode or cathode composition. In fact we expect to evolve the anode and cathode. It is not merely if that happens. We expect it to happen”. Using Forbes as an information source is like using the writings on bathroom walls in a public toilet. My quote is directly from Musk about 54 minutes in on his shareholders meeting. Though he has said the same thing many times before.

Well it is about making money but it is also about advancing to better, faster, cleaner, more compelling modes of transport. Li-ion batteries are vastly superior to anything before them. People though are always slow to adopt. It’s not uncommon to see people think the horse and buggy would never be replaced. We are now at another one of those cross-roads.

Deval769

Ivor, I love your concept of thinking. The fact that everyone is slow to adopt is no different than the past where so many are afraid to accept change. Look back 100 years and everything seem pretty primitive. A hundred years later, we continue to advance from whatever platform is available. At least people are looking at other forms of energy. Future developments will build on the successes of today no matter the insignificant value people put on them. I remember 8 track tapes in cars now we have satellite. I remember roll up windows, now most cars have electric. I remember tubed tires, now we have run-flats.

Overall, there will always be skeptics. They tend to fuel advancements because no one likes to be told they can’t do something, so there will always be someone around to prove them wrong. I for one am eager to see what else happens. I will be test driving a Tesla this weekend in Orlando, FL.

Keep Tech-ing ahead!

Ivor O’Connor

Thank you Deval.

mortisier

“And Lithium-ion batteries are horrendous for the environment. You can
buy a gas-guzzling SVU and drive it for the rest of your life and you
won’t create as much pollution as the production/recycling cycle of
Lithium-ion produces — and that’s just the batteries for a single car!”

This is a blatant falsity if not pure misinformation. follow the links to the facts. These are some well/mine to wheel studies that say you are dead wrong.

Never ascribe to malice (or pecuniary interest) that which is adequately explained …

Ivor O’Connor

I never do intentionally. In this case though it was obvious what Pelov was up to. I purposely didn’t respond to Pelov and instead responded to Mortisier whom probably wasn’t aware of Pelov’s intentions.

Joel Hruska

Nothing scaled like semiconductors in the history of ever.

Nothing.

I have used this analogy before. The 1940s Iowa class battleship mounted 12.1 inches of belt armor. That’s 307mm.

Imagine if, today, we could build a battlecruiser that offered the same amount of protection in 3mm of armor that the 1940s Iowa-class Battlecruisers enjoyed in 307mm of armor. You would undoubtedly call that a colossal advance. Yet we can’t do it. Materials engineering has not advanced enough for a 3mm armor plate to offer identical protection as a 307mm plate from the late 1930s (a 100x improvement).

Yet today, transistors are a MILLION times smaller than they were in the 1960s.

Nothing scales like semiconductors. Ever.

Ivor O’Connor

Maybe you misunderstood. Take a D size battery you’d find at a radio shack 30 years ago. Is it about 10x less than the size D battery you would find now? How about 60 years ago. Is it 1% of what it is today? Not saying these are exact numbers but they are probably close. Who knows what they will be like in 30 years from now.

I think you are fixating on size instead of years. I am, and have been, stating the scaling of 8% has been going on for quite a long time and shows no sign of ending.

Joel Hruska

No. I’m talking about the scaling of key performance metrics.

Also: A D-Cell battery from 2014 is the same size as a D-Cell battery from 1898, the year they were invented. The “D” references the size and shape of the battery.

You may be talking about the capacity and weight of the batteries, both of which have improved, but less than you think.

Note that the maximum theoretical limit of 1899 looked an awful lot like the practical limit of 1991. In just shy of a century, we’d certainly improved the technology, but at nothing like the 8% a year you suggest. 8% a year would mean doubling every 9 years, which would mean we’d be up above the 10,000 mark by now.

The current green bar for theoretical encompasses completely alternate methods of building batteries that don’t touch lithium-ion technology, like graphene. The practical limit of lithium-ion is listed as about 40% higher than the current 2010 limit.

As I’ve told you before, from the beginning, there is a limited amount of energy that can be held in a lithium-ion battery and a limited number of ways to store that energy. The technology has a hard ceiling on it. That’s why research into completely novel types of energy storage are so important.

I do not know how to explain this to you more bluntly. Just as theres’s a maximum limit on single-junction solar panel efficiency (about 29%) imposed by the laws of physics, and a limit on multi-junction solar panel efficiency (around 85%) imposed by the same laws of physics, there is a fundamental limit to how much energy can be stored in a lithium-ion matrix.

You can’t break it. You can’t bend it. You can’t change it. That’s how much energy is THERE.

And we know precisely where that line is for any given battery type and structure. We can do the math.

Ivor O’Connor

Joel,

So if you continue to do your math you would see a 10x performance in 30 years. So as far as you went you did a good job. I’m also glad you figured out the size of a D battery hasn’t changed. That is why I used it. The size of a car is not going to change much. Very much like a D sized battery. The amount of energy needs to increase.

Now I’m not talking about any particular chemistry in the D battery. I’m pointing out how the mAh capacity of a D sized battery cell has improved. Not the weight. Go find how many mAh a D sized battery held 30 years ago, then 60 years ago, and compare. It is amazing.

Joel Hruska

*sigh* You aren’t getting it.

You started off this argument with a bunch of claims about how lithium-ion tech, in particular, would improve. We aren’t talking about whether or not batteries can improve. We’re talking about lithium-ion technology.

Yes, modern long-life alkaline D-cells are much more powerful than their 1960s counterparts, because back in the 1960s, we were using carbon-zinc. We switch to alkalines in the 1960s, and that’s where you get the giant jump (and you can get NiMH batteries now, that provide more power).

By CHANGING the entire battery technology, we improved battery performance.

Lithium-ion batteries cannot improve forever, any more than alkalines or Lead-acid. Pelov’s original comment was directly about this. We will have to move to alternative battery chemistries or entirely different methods of storing power because lithium-ion has a hard chemical ceiling attached to it.

Ivor O’Connor

Pelov’s original comment was directly about this? Go back and read his comments. He doesn’t care in particular about “Shitty Lithium-ion batteries”. He has a whole tirade going. Spewing Tesla hatred.

And what were you thinking when you wrote this?
“Musk isn’t just trying to own the vehicle technology — he’s on a crusade to improve, patent, and ultimately dictate the design of its energy system. As long term plans go, it’s a smart one.” Stuff like that I would expect from Pelov. Not you!

Joel Hruska

Go back to your original statement that I responded to:

“Li-ion batteries are improving by about 8% per year. So in 10 years you’ll be able to travel twice the distance with the same weight battery pack as you do now. In 20 years you’ll be able to travel four times (4x) as far as you do now. In 30 years you’ll be able to drive cross country in a single charge in the current Model S using a new battery pack. And that 8% was before there were plans to make giga factories. So it is not a dead end!”

From the first, all of my responses have spoken to this point. I have never said we can’t build better batteries. I have said, repeatedly, that LITHIUM-ION batteries will not scale indefinitely.

Every big gain in battery technology over the past decades has come from *switching* technologies. I agree with you that lithium-ion has scaled better than lead-acid or nickel metal hydride, but even so, that’s from different chemistries — lithium polymer is a very different battery from lithium-cobalt.

We already know how to build a battery with 2x the specific energy of lithium-ion. Zinc-air has 2-2.5x the specific energy of lithium-ion. You just can’t recharge them.

Lithium-air, if we can manage it, has 10x the specific energy of lithium-ion.

But none of these ARE lithium-ion, and my entire point was that we will not scale lithium-ion up to 2x – 5x its present performance because lithium-ion chemistry does NOT allow for that kind of gain.

Ivor O’Connor

Well thank you Joel for going back and trying to salvage this discussion. You have done a remarkable job of it. I was indeed mixing oranges and apples. However that should have been apparent when I mentioned how energy densities in batteries have improved over 30 and 60 years. I suppose I should have made it clearer but as you know it’s almost impossible to write so that all the mistakes are removed. Anyways I was replying to that troll who was saying anything Tesla does is wrong. When he said using the batteries that are currently being used is a dead end I tried to point out that it is an evolving technology and Tesla has already stated that it will be quick to switch as better battery technology becomes available. That they expect 8% improvements annually. From the recent talk though it seems they may already be expecting to lower their production price by over 50% as soon as the giga factory goes up. Things should get very interesting.

Ivor O’Connor

You seem to be fixated on only one style of battery. I’m not specifying the battery chemistry. I’m specifying battery technology in general. We have a car. We need to keep improving the battery technology. It will happen at about 8% per year. We just don’t know the components that will be used.

cpy

Or maybe some new tech finally gets real and we get much much better batteries.

Joel Hruska

To be fair, we are investing in alternate battery techs and other technology. Trust me, I get blizzarded weekly with proposals to write about them. ; )

Kurt Jenney

The charging infrastructure has nothing to do with battery tech. Your argument is invalid.

http://www.korioi.net/ Korios

Hopefully graphene super-capacitor tech will soon enter production state; another promising tech is Li-air tech. With 3 to 4 times the energy density you can have the same battery weight with 3 to 4 times the range or a battery with the same range but 3 to 4 times less weight.

Joel Hruska

This is always tricky. If you read about Standard Oil, you’ll find that Rockefeller genuinely believed he was doing the right thing to standardize fuel quality, availability, and price. And here’s the trick — he did. Standard Oil paid out a huge % of its profits as dividends, it invested in other related industries, and it helped stabilize the nascent market for gasoline and other fuels.

Controlling standards is hugely important, but control alone does not make a company malicious or evil. It’s what you do with it.

pelov lov

Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean malicious or evil, or anything of the sort. I’m just not convinced that setting any sort of standards while the technology is still in its infancy and inevitably prone to some massive changes is going to be a good thing. Short term? Definitely. But long term? Eh, I’m not so sure.

http://www.toddrlockwood.com/ Todd R. Lockwood

“That’s kinda scary, isn’t it?”

It might be scary if Elon Musk’s primary mission was to make billions of dollars for himself, but it’s not. He is sincerely interested in making a better future for the planet Earth, and he believes the best way to do that is to convert the world’s transportation systems to electric propulsion, and secondly, to make solar energy the predominate source fuel for generating electricity. As a brilliant engineer, he has a fundamental understanding of how these changes will save us from certain catastrophe and how to implement them. While public support and political support may take a while to fully muster, when things bad enough with our climate, the world will eventually realize he is correct.

Joel Hruska

Read about Rockefeller’s motivations sometime, seriously. He truly believed he was doing the right thing for everyone, including consumers, the US, and the economy. He was mystified at the attacks against him, believing that he’d stepped in and vastly helped the emerging ecosystem.

And of course, he partly *had.* But this kind of control can warp the thinking of even those with the most noble ventures. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking “I think it things should be this way, I’m obviously a good person, therefore things should obviously be this way.”

Elon Musk is a pretty genuinely awesome person, but he’s not immune from that logic trap.

The Rockefeller analogy doesn’t really apply. Elon Musk’s ideas rely on “first principles” reasoning, not opinion or deductive reasoning. Yes, he is motivated by doing what is important, necessary, and the right thing to do. But his solutions are built on the most basic laws of physics combined with commercial viability. Solar energy crossed such a viability threshold about three years ago. Investment opportunities in solar are booming. Solar makes the argument for electric transport even more compelling because with solar we can eliminate carbon emissions from both power plants and cars at the same time.

Something worth considering: Even if we manage to double the fuel efficiency of gasoline powered automobiles over the next decade, the number of gasoline cars in the world will have more than doubled over that same period. We won’t have gained anything in the fight against global warming.

JonathanMaddox

The number of cars in use is unlikely to double again. There’s already a car for every seven people in the world, and usage numbers in some more affluent places where car ownership is highest (like the USA, Japan and Western Europe) are actually declining, at least in part because those places also have excellent communications infrastructure and stable populations, and many have good or improving public transportation and walkable neighbourhoods. While car ownership rates can still be expected to go up in the poorest countries, they’re already impressively high in China and even India, so real exponential-growth markets are very limited.

“… the main barrier to universal adoption by other EVs is whether or not other vehicles can accept the power level that a Supercharger delivers”

I’d imagine a good standard would be for the vehicle to first tell it’s needs through an open standard, and the charging station delivers to it’s best ability. This would make it device independent and future proof. Something simple as:

Advantage would be station would only deliver as much as the vehicle can handle, or as much as the station can deliver. It keep usage/request statistics to know when it might be need to upgrade station to be able to meet future demands. It would then be able to handle request from anything from an EV bike to an EV plane.

Bubba Nicholson

Nice point.

Ivor O’Connor

Most of the non-tesla battery packs take forever to charge. Relative to a Tesla. So tying up a Tesla Super Charger so a little battery can charge in 4 hours would be hugely inefficient. Not only would you these non-tesla cars need to pay for the electricity they would also need to pay enough to build more superchargers. So if the supercharger is utilized 50% of the time by non Tesla vehicles those non Tesla vehicles should pay for half of the infrastructure. Say $500,000 dollars. Now if these companies build their own chargers it might cost them $50,000. They could build out 10x the infrastructure not using Tesla’s standards. So I don’t see it happening. Tesla can make their charging centers a standard that works for everybody like you have shown. However the car companies are not going to pay to use that standard. For them it is overkill and their money could be better used elsewhere.

Darryl Jackson

Elon Musk has to be the smartest person on earth right now. Give away the patent secrets with stipulations. If everyone gets on board, he will be able to provide the batteries and other software at a cost. Just means he would add new customers almost over night and do it with the help of everyone. He could become a trillionaire in little not time. WOW

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Copyright 1996-2015 Ziff Davis, LLC.PCMag Digital Group All Rights Reserved. ExtremeTech is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis, LLC. is prohibited.